Narrandera's Tamika Rourke is excited to be playing in the AFLW Futures match on Saturday

Rourke is one of 44 players aged 17 and under who have been selected for the match which is being held at Kinetic Stadium in Frankston.

A budding prodigy who impressed during the recent Allies' campaign, Rourke said that she was very much looking forward to playing in the futures showcase.

"Yeah I am actually very excited," Rourke said.

"I'm pretty nervous though but pretty excited, there's going to be some cool opportunities and it will be pretty cool.

"It's always good to go and see the new girls and obviously I'm excited to go and play footy but then we are also going to watch a footy game and stay with the team and meet all the new people.

"It's going to be pretty cool to play a pretty high standard game."

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The futures game is a platform for the best underage players to showcase their talents on the big stage and it is likely that a fair majority of the players competing on Saturday will then likely be picked up in the AFLW draft in roughly 12 months time.

Rourke doesn't have to worry about the draft just yet but said that she'd love the opportunity to play AFLW if given the opportunity.

"It would probably be the dream to be honest," she said.

"But I've just got to work hard and hopefully it will come true one day."

Rourke impressed in her pair of Allies' appearances as an underage player being named in the best in their games against Western Australian and Queensland.

Going up against some of the best young talent in the country, Rourke loved the experience and said she got a lot out of the campaign.

"Yeah it was good and I really enjoyed it," she said.

"I was pretty nervous for that too going into the camps, but I loved that and the girls and coaches were so nice.

"Then learning all the new game styles and playing with a whole bunch of different girls who play different types of games was pretty cool.

"We went to all kinds of different places, we went to the Gold Coast and then we went to Sydney and it gave us heaps of good opportunities."

Rourke played alongside fellow Riverina pair Emma Suckling and Cleo Buttifant in her two Allies games and she admitted having a couple of familiar faces definitely made the experience a bit easier.

"Yeah it definitely helped with the nerves at least knowing people going down there," she said.

"I already knew how they played because we'd played in the Giants together so it was pretty good to have some girls that I knew going down there."

It's been a busy year for Rourke who has juggled commitments with the Allies, GWS Giants Academy and Murray Bushrangers while she also played a starring role for Narrandera in a couple of appearances at the start of the year in the Southern NSW Womens League.

Rourke has subsequently played in quite a number of higher standard games this season and she believes that experience has led to her becoming a better footballer over the course of the season.

"Yeah I reckon," she said.

"Even just going to Giants is a big step up which has developed my fundamentals and then going to Allies after that.

"It developed me even more by learning about game styles and learning about different game plans, so I'm pretty excited to see what I can get out of this weekend."

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